Macron Surrenders on Carbon Tax

RUSH: Speaking of which, ladies and gentlemen, have you seen what happened in France? This little Millennial president has canceled his carbon tax. The middle class protesters have won the day. The yellow vesters have won the day. Grab audio sound bite No. 2. This is Edouard Philippe, who is the prime minister in France, and he delivered a televised address to the nation about the yellow vest riots yesterday and said this.

PHILIPPE: (via translator) The yellow vests love their country. They want their taxes to be decreased and their revenues to increase. This is at the heart of the president’s engagement, and if I did not succeed in expressing this — if the majority had trouble convincing the French people — I see that we need to change something. No tax ought to endanger the nation’s unity. We have heard the demand expressed by all those who have consulted in the past few days. I suspend, for a duration of six months, the tax measures.

RUSH: (laughing) Six months! “We’re gonna suspend the tax for six months, but you better be ready, because we’re gonna slap it back on you again at the beginning of summer when you’re gonna be driving more than you are now. We’re gonna soak you. We’re just gonna delay it for six months.” But the bottom line is you’ve seen all of the video out of France. Remember as I so credulously intoned yesterday: Europe, we are told… We are told Europe’s utopia.

The Europeans have it down pat! The Europeans know how to do life in the twenty-first century. They have trains. They don’t pollute. The Europeans are all in on fixing climate change. The Europeans have multiculturalism down. They’re sophisticated! The Europeans don’t have any rabble that have anything to say about anything. Europe is utopia. And this little guy macaroon (or whatever his name is, Macron) bought into this idea that the whole world…

See, this is what the left does and what the media does. Whatever their issues are, they act like every human being alive agrees with them. So this guy thinks that he was elected to raise taxes to fix climate change. So he goes about it, does it, and holy hell greets him as a result, and he’s stunned! He’s stunned. He thought his approval numbers would skyrocket. Why, after all, the people realize we’ve only got a few years to save earth, and this is a vastly necessary step.

Except when it happens to you! When you’re being blamed and when you’re told, “You have to bear the burden of all the damage you’ve caused in destroying the planet; here’s $7-a-gallon gasoline,” people say, “Whoa! You fix it.” They’re not signing up for it whatsoever. But in this case the French are doing exactly what the global climate change political movement wants done. This little president over there passes a massive tax on carbon, driving the price of gasoline over $7 a gallon.

And, you know, this is still not a big story in the Drive-By Media, especially it isn’t gonna be a big story in the Drive-Bys that the tax has been postponed and rescinded, because this is a forerunner of what they want to do around the world. It’s exactly what they want to do here, starting back in the 1990s. Bill Clinton was the first to propose a carbon tax, seriously, in 1992/1993. It didn’t go anywhere. It routinely comes up. Lot of Republicans sign onto it too. Environmental protection, don’t you know. In fact, this is a New York Times story.

“France will suspend for six months a small tax increase on gasoline and diesel fuel that had been slated for January, in an attempt to quell weeks of protests and rioting by the so-called Yellow Vests movement.” There’s nothing “so-called” about them. That’s who they are. The middle class are required to have these vests in the car case there’s an accident. They put ’em on so they won’t be run down by other motorists. Small tax. Small increase in it. Nothing that’s justifying this kind of reaction.